Wheels

Ben bought a moped! It's a Vespa Piaggio Ciao with a 49 cc. engine, just under the size where you need to register it. Ben's excited because it's a moped and inherently awesome. I'm excited because it means I can take the car on backpacking trips while he's at work. I'm not sure why it looks so tiny in this photo:

In other news, I have a mountain bike which is nowhere near as fast as a moped. Quite often, it goes the speed of a pedestrian as I walk it up a hill. But it's still pretty awesome, too. Yay for two-wheeled mobility!

Bikin', Hikin', Joggin'

Since posting last, I've returned to Lower Dan's Trail a couple times, once with my bike and once with Ben. Biking it was a blast -- at least, that one downhill mile was a blast. After that, it turned into me walking my bike up a lot of hills and falling off once when I realized I have no idea how to ride my bike down the sharp corner of a switchback. Expert mountain biker, I am not. Besides, when you're on a bike you're much less likely to find stashes of oyster mushrooms like so:

Today I jogged/walked the New Growth and Old Growth trails at McDonald Forest. I'm hoping that incorporating biking and jogging into my routine will get me a bit more in shape. Judging by how much I ached after biking, the plan is succeeding!

Another Use for Lion's Mane

Today I had a lion's mane "lobster" roll for lunch! I cooked it the same as before, but placed it in a toasted hot dog bun. Not the most fancy recipe, but delicious nonetheless.

Fuzzy Creatures

Last weekend at Mount Pisgah, Ben and I found what looked like a large, furry orange and black ant. Turns out it was a velvet ant or "cow-killer," a solitary wasp with an extremely painful sting. Glad I didn't touch it!
Yesterday, the theme of fuzziness continued when we found the following on Lower Dan's Trail at McDonald Forest:

Their name is appropriate: cat's ears. Lower Dan's Trail (five miles, moderate according to my "Corvallis Trails" book) was incredibly beautiful. I think I may have found the perfect place to bring my mountain bike, or at least return for the occasional hike. We found tons of blue flowers, too:

I'm not sure what they are; I still need to pick up a wildflower guide. I also found a big pile of oyster mushrooms on a log, but when I grabbed one it had been slimed by a banana slug! I am starting to see the hazards of banana slugs...
Tonight, it's back to work for both of us, which is kind of ironic since it's Friday night and everyone around here is celebrating OSU getting out.

Hot Springs and Fried Morels

After a day spent in Eugene yesterday eating delicious food, playing games, and hiking up Mount Pisgah with a friend from college, Ben and I drove out to Delta Campground in Blue River. The goal: waking up extra early to hit Cougar Hot Springs. We woke up at 5 a.m., drove to the trailhead, and hiked in an easy half mile to the springs, which were a series of pools varying from toasty to cool. No one was there, so we claimed the pool at the very top where the steaming, sulfurous water flowed out of a gap in the rock. After soaking for awhile, a couple other people showed up so we took off, sedate. It was a slow, lazy hike back to the trailhead.

Back in Corvallis, we took a nap and then later I fried up some morels for an after-dinner snack:

First I cut the morels in half, soaked them in salt water, and rinsed them, although getting all the springtails out of morels is an exercise in futility (that's why I use pepper, to camouflage the bugs I'm sure to miss). I coated them in beaten egg and milk, then breaded them in crushed up saltine crackers seasoned with salt and pepper. And then the obligatory step of any morel cooking: fry them in butter. They were excellent.

The Queen Ant

I've always wanted to have an ant colony, but the ones you buy in stores only come with workers. Without a queen ant, you just have a bunch of workers running around meaninglessly until they die, not a colony.
So this evening, when Ben found a queen ant beside the refrigerator, my first thought was "ant farm!" We placed an empty plastic bottle inside a glass jar, surrounded it with dirt, and closed off the top with bug netting: instant ant farm. Now, we wait...

Future ant farm... I hope